A few other relevant links;
* WIDL - http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-widl
People have been thinking about this for a while :)
* URISpace - http://www.w3.org/TR/urispace.html
A generic configuration format for Web intermediaries, clients and
servers. Our first use case was configuring Akamai servers for
customers (this is the basis of what they use today); we also proposed
its use in P3P for the "well-known location" format. It's more about
describing a space of URIs than individual resources, but that's one of
the more important -- and in some proposals, most overlooked -- aspect
of describing the Web.
* Use Cases for Web Description Formats -
http://www.mnot.net/blog/2004/06/14/desc_usecases
Talking about why we need a description format for the Web, and the
different facets of the requirements that leads to.
* Questions Leading to a Web Description Format -
http://www.mnot.net/blog/2005/04/29/webdesc_continued
Continuation of the use cases discussion.
* Tarawa - http://www.mnot.net/tarawa/
This is an early version of an API that maps Web resources directly to
objects; i.e., HTTP methods map to methods on the object, the object
has a 'children' property which contains a dictionary of resource names
and Resource instances. This approach to HTTP brings some specific
requirements, such as being able to easily figure out the resource
hierarchy.
--
Mark Nottingham http://www.mnot.net/